“Animals speak with pure affection. It’s important to me to get something going in NY so we can get to be a no-kill city, and give the animals homes and more attention and love.”

Stephen Sondheim told me that Oscar Hammerstein believed everything that he wrote. So there’s great truth in the songs, and that’s what was so wonderful to find.

I know Mama Rose is a great role and I love having a chance to do it.

You’d look out and there’d be little babies watching the show, and boys and girls. They loved the cowboys, and they loved Annie. There were young people seeing the show for the first time. I stayed for two years because I enjoyed it so much.

I love Some Enchanted Evening, and If I Loved You. And as I sing them more and more, I find new favorites.

It was one of the most exciting, perfect evenings of my life, my solo debut at Carnegie Hall. And knowing we were all there to raise money for Gay Men’s Health Crisis made the evening an extraordinary experience.

In my career, there have been three things that were challenging: playing gay; playing a Jewish woman; and playing Anton Chekhov. The scariest part was playing Chekhov!

I’d like to one day play Amanda, the mother, in The Glass Menagerie.

Working on behalf of companion animals is so important. We start to realize how healing they are.

Singing lessons are like body building for your larynx.

“Into the Woods” was… a lot of running around in the woods! I can’t wait to see the show again. People didn’t realize it back then, but kids still come up to me-young people-and they talk about it. It really made its mark.

I feel strongly for gay marriage to be accepted.

I don’t smoke, I don’t drink much, I don’t eat red meat. I stay out of the sun.

We’ve been listening to Wagner, which is so great.

I love pasta with the homemade marinara sauce I had as a kid.

It Might As Well Be Spring… I used to sing that as a young girl in my voice lessons. Then I picked it up again and it spoke to me in a whole new way.

When I grew up in the ’60s, your hair had to be straight and you had to be skinny and have no boobs, and it was like not my era.

When I was 14, I wanted to smoke because my mother smoked like mad. I wanted to smoke to look grown-up. But my mother said: ‘You shouldn’t smoke. Your hands are not that beautiful and that shows when you smoke.

I don’t want my kids to grow up with no father like I did. I came to the conclusion a while ago that you can work until midnight and not be finished or you can work until 6 or 7 and not be finished. I decided I’d rather work until 6 or 7.

I want to have fun. It’s a beautiful life. You learn, you win, you lose, but you get up.

Whenever I wake up, I’m up. I don’t lie there like an idiot. I get up, run up a hill, get some exercise, and have some time with my thoughts.

I love PBS! I grew up on it. If I had to say which channels were good, I’d say, you got your PBS, your History Channel, your Discovery.

As a child I wanted to be a grown-up. I wanted to know everything – not that I like to talk about it. I hate intellectual conversation with intellectuals because I only care about my opinion.

I’m a hard nut to crack, and I take it standing up.

Some things you just can’t question. Like you can’t question why two plus two is four. So don’t question it, don’t try to look it up.